Anna Lee was one of my first clients. I gasped when I saw her chart.
She had five planets in the 6th house: the Sun, Venus, Mercury, Pluto
and Uranus. What’s more, they were all in Virgo, the natural
sign of this house. To my novice mind this information jumped from
the page with exclamation points. But what did it mean? At the time,
I had no idea. I looked forward to the day when I could look at charts
and instantly "know." But frankly, that day has never arrived.

I'm alternately envious and suspicious of those who can make instant
analyses of a chart with no knowledge of the person who’s living
it. But there's enough disagreement about the right and wrong ways
to practice astrology. I don't want to add to that here. I'll just
make a confession: I'm lousy with maps. I have to touch into the
territory before the map becomes sensible. Even something apparently
simple, like a cluster of planets in the same house and sign, will
keep me guessing. For some individuals it does indeed mean an intense
and focused life. For others, like Anna Lee, the stellium acts more
like a confusing tangle of wires, criss-crossing, by way of rulership,
the entire chart. I remember thinking if anyone could teach me about
6th house mysteries, it would be Anna Lee. Saturn was about to oppose
her 6th house Sun. I watched the effects of this transit with interest.

Work or health problems often appear during transits to the 6th.
It was a good bet that for Anna Lee, one or both areas would be affected.
What actually happened, in the months of Saturn's applying orb, was
that Anna Lee's boss Jerry suffered work and health problems. He
was asked to leave the company and had a heart bypass operation.
Sometimes close associates will do our transits for us, but rarely
do we escape untouched. Anna Lee was concerned about her boss' health.
But his leaving the firm turned her own world upside-down. She was
afraid of two possibilities: upper management would ask her to leave
next, or possibly worse, to stay and take his place.

Over the next few months, at Saturn's grueling pace, Anna Lee struggled
with her situation. Initially she panicked. Then she interviewed.
She got two offers and turned both down. When rumors surfaced that
she was leaving, she went straight to the company president and made
it clear that she wasn't. It took her boss Jerry months to find a
new position, and the company even longer to name his replacement.
But as the Saturn opposition became exact, Jerry finally left, and
an archenemy was put in his place. Anna Lee was miserable.

" So why didn't you leave?"

Her eyes flickered. She took a breath, "I don't know, I guess
I like it there." Moments earlier she'd described her workplace
as an intense time-pressured environment that rarely gave her a full
lunch hour; upper management never appreciated how hard she, her
boss, the whole department worked. She considered her department
the nerve center of the company. On the days when Jerry was out,
she felt she was holding the whole company together. A Saturn transit
sometimes rewards past efforts and brings a promotion: "So why
didn't you apply for your boss's position?"

" Oh, I don't think I could do it. It's a lot of pressure..." Her
voice trailed off. Her eyes moved to a spot in the distance, then
came back. "I just like to work. I don't mind working hard.
But I don't want to run things. I'm not ambitious, really."

Victimization, insecurity, a loss of options, plus the willingness
to work like a steamroller—I checked these qualities against
other 6th house Suns that I knew. There was a similarity in their
stories. Not all 6th house Suns are hard-working insecure victims.
Yet often enough their voices have the same tentative tone when discussing
their jobs or their futures. It’s not unusual to hear them
complain about being overworked or under appreciated. Their resident
inner 6th house critic doesn't help. "Do better, work harder" are
common 6th house strategies. But they don’t always make the
best life solutions. Perhaps this is the downside to the 6th’s
upside of service—6th house Suns tend to wait on others. When
the others don't come through, these Suns are stuck.

Ancient astrologers considered the 6th a malefic house—not
a happy place for a planet to be. John Frawley, a contemporary practitioner
of traditional principles, writes about the 6th: “This is the
house of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: of all the
things that the harsh, cruel world and that odd bunch of people who
inhabit it conspire to inflict upon us.”1 Planets in this house
are weakened and can harm the other houses that they rule. This is
not the house of health, Frawley contends, but the house of illness.
The 1st house indicates one’s health or vitality; the 6th describes
what undermines it. Nor is it the house of work or service, says
Frawley. This is a modern invention, loosely based on the 6th ruling
servants and tradespeople—those who work for us. Our own work
is still described by the 10th. Contemporary interpretations of the
6th, says Frawley, are simply wrong. They derive from the happy-talk
tendency of modern astrologers to whitewash any bad celestial news.

Frawley’s views sound harsh to anyone raised on modern interpretations.
Yet they fill in a missing note: planets here are often mysteriously
under stress. If you’re a counseling astrologer, however, it’s
pretty unproductive to tell someone “You’re screwed.” Perhaps
more useful is Dane Rudhyar’s perspective. He describes the
6th as territory in crisis—requiring reorientation and adjustment.
Following the 5th house of creativity, children, and romance, the
6th describes what happens when our 5th house dreams collide with
the real world. We realize our creative expressions don’t sing
with immortality. We notice our romantic life has lost its radiance.
Despite our best efforts, our children grumble and disappoint. In
the 6th we notice life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
We can drown in our failure. Or we can do something about it. We
can change our approach, acquire new techniques. We can either suffer
or grow.

“ Because the sixth house represents fundamentally everything
that deals with personal crises and the way to meet them,” writes
Rudhyar, “it shows, more than any other factor in the whole
of the astrological field, how an individual can grow and become
transformed.”2 To a traditional astrologer, this might sound
like happy talk. It depends on whether you side more with fate or
free will. Where traditionalists and moderns can agree is that the
6th often brings the test of suffering. Planets here require patience,
endurance, faith, and above all, the effort to learn from one’s
experience. Anyone with an emphasized natal 6th house, says Rudhyar,
cannot escape the call to transform.

As Mars was crossing Anna Lee's 6th house cusp, I received a surprising
phone message. Anna Lee had accepted a new position with another
company. I was thrilled about the burst of confidence that had brought
this change. As I listened to her news, I couldn’t help but
note the ironies. She was taking a management position—the
very thing she’d resisted before. She would be heading a whole
new department, in fact, building it from the ground up. It was funny
she was leaving now, she related, because she'd discovered that her
new boss at the old company was much better than she'd feared. Upper
management was finally making the positive changes she’d longed
for.

I wondered at her leaving the old company just as things were finally
getting better. But I remembered the 6th house’s association
with illness. As Frawley reminds, illness is a temporary crisis meant
to restore one’s system to balance. Anna Lee’s unhappiness
with her work was perhaps a useful fever. It allowed her to burn
through her passivity and meet life at a higher level. Once this
fever passed, she was free to move on. The ancients linked the 6th
with alchemy. Perhaps this supports Rudhyar’s view that the
6th is a transformational house, where one is meant to turn life’s
lead into gold. As for Anna Lee, the last I heard she was doing very
well.

Both ancient and modern astrologers agree that the planet which
naturally rules the 6th is Mercury. Mercury is associated with the
mind, in particular the ability to reason. If the 6th brings crises,
it’s the logic of Mercury that helps us respond appropriately.
Through Mercury we analyze and organize our experience. We divide
our time into useful units of activity. We conjure proactive strategies
to keep both crises and illness at bay. Sometimes astrologers talk
about the 6th as though they were nagging mothers, reminding us to
make our beds and hang up our clothes. When this house is emphasized
by transit, progression or solar return, modern astrologers advise: "Eat
your vegetables, take your vitamins, exercise, quit smoking; streamline
work routines, reduce your stress, get organized."

A few astrologers speak of the 6th in metaphysically trendier terms,
a nod perhaps to its alchemical roots. They advise activities like “spiritual
centering,” “sacred ritual,” “discovering
magic in mundane details.” An emphasized 6th house by transit
might prompt a need to bind the sacred to the ordinary. No doubt
such statements would make Frawley squirm. But they do address a
common 6th house problem. Mercury rules machines. In the 6th, we
often act like one. When my progressed Moon entered the 6th, I suffered
no monumental crises. My life revolved around work; my days were
dull. If I suffered from anything, it was a lack of imagination.
I hungered for a more magical perception of my days.

The 6th refers to daily time and how we spend it. Here most of
us defer to the cultural norm—which is to do time mechanically.
We fill it with productive activity: We work. Most of us have no
choice. This could indeed be the “bad fortune” the ancients
were talking about! However, most of us would admit that working
is not entirely bad. There is something in us that likes a regular
structure in our days. Studies have shown that the most depressed
individuals are not the ones who have nine-to-five jobs, but the
ones who don't—the unemployed, the infirm, the retired—those
who have nowhere to go and nothing to do. The ancients said that
action-oriented Mars “joys” in this house. Our 6th house
likes to be in motion. But does it carry the potential for magic
too?

More and more, I find myself taking my cues from children. They
are, of course, the undisputed masters of ordinary magic. Initially
I laughed when my friend told me the following story about his three-year-old
Zack. Now I see it as a koan of 6th house wisdom. Zack has two toothbrushes:
a blue one for bedtime, a green one for mornings. One morning Zack's
dad inadvertently squeezed the toothpaste onto the blue toothbrush.
Zack was undone. Thinking this was a good time to teach Zack flexibility,
Dad tried to cajole him into brushing with the blue one. Zack threw
such a fit, his father had to carry him down to the breakfast table,
stiff and screaming, teeth unbrushed. The tantrum continued until
Dad gave in. He carried Zack back up the stairs. They reeled the
day back and started it over again, with the green toothbrush this
time.

I thought my friend was raising an unusual child. Then I had a
toddler of my own. Branden taught me the importance of childhood
rituals: the right activity, with the proper objects, at the right
time. When he was two, Branden had breakfast in the green chair,
watched TV with the checkered pillow. Mom had to drink her coffee
out of the mug with the bird on it, and Dad had to drop his keys
on the top (not middle!) shelf. One morning Branden and I left the
house after giving the dog one cookie instead of two. The relentless
sobs from the back seat "dog cookie, dog cookie" meant
I had to drive two blocks back home and right the wrong. I was not
happy about this (something the dog knew instantly, cowering in disbelief
as I stormed in to toss another cookie her way). That morning was
one of those "battles of wills" between parent and child
that the old child-rearing books warn about. All is lost, they say,
if the child "wins." Yet when I caught the look on Branden's
face that morning, it wasn’t triumph, but relief. His magic
spell had been preserved. The day had started right.

This is the 6th house for a child, who has neither work nor health
concerns, nor even a good grasp of time. Children experience the
6th through their organizing rituals. Adults have routines, but children
have rituals. Rituals create energy; routines drain it. Rituals invite
assistance from the invisible world. They serve a magical protective
function—acting as the garlic and sacred cross that keeps the
6th house vampires at bay. What draws a child to certain objects
and sequences is a mystery, but the power of this attachment can't
be denied. To children what happens in the present matters. The 6th
house holds the personal holy rituals that give meaning to their
world.

When children enter school, these meaningful attachments are gradually
severed. Their unique experience of time is relinquished to society's
more efficient rhythms. Personal magic gives way to productivity
and practicality. The older one gets, the worse this becomes. The
year I had my Sun plus four more planets in the 6th house of my solar
return, my daily duties were overwhelming. I was hopping with productive,
efficiently scheduled activity. I kept waiting for the avalanche
of responsibilities to disappear. They never did. Towards the end
of that year I heard Ray Merriman speak about the solar return 6th
house Sun. He nailed me when he said, "These people have only
themselves to blame. They over-schedule themselves, not realizing
they should do the opposite: relax, float, and flow."

Merriman was suggesting that to balance the 6th, we should look
to its opposing house, the 12th. This is the house belonging to the
invisible world. It is Neptune’s territory. To keep Mercury’s
efficiency in proper measure, we can evoke more Neptune—imagination,
spirituality, the unconsciousness of dream. Just as our dreams carry
images from our days, we might allow our days to remember images
from our dreams.

Jung teaches there are two roots to psychological disease:
the gods we forget to honor and the gods we overdo. Too much of Mercury’s “doing” without
Neptune’s “floating in the empty spaces” makes "stress" a
common 6th house syndrome. When Neptune is forgotten, this uninvited
and quietly vengeful guest lies in wait, to throw us under his spell.
Driving the freeway home, we suffer brief comas, waking up just minutes
before the off-ramp arrives. We forget why we opened the refrigerator
or entered the bedroom. Our bodies working like efficient machines,
we go numb to the day. When we lose touch with our present, we fall
prey to addictions. It's dishonored Neptune who puts the drink, the
cigarette, the remote control in our hands.

If the 6th is a dull or harried house, perhaps we have only ourselves
to blame. We might buy books like the Goddess in the Office. We might
wear red on a Mars day, burn incense at night, or mime a few spells.
But it's not finding the "right" magic ritual that will
save us. It's finding the ability to attach to it—to have what
happens in the present matter again. I’m not suggesting we
should throw tantrums like a child when our personal routines are
disturbed. Rather let's balance Mercury with Neptune. Let's use our
reason to preserve spiritual imagination. Like children, let’s
become the high priests and priestesses of our daily lives.

This is easy enough to say, but how is it really achieved? I don’t
think simple formulas will do, although Merriman was on to something.
I’ve noticed that those who do the 6th house well tend to have
a good relationship with the 12th. They enjoy floating in the empty
spaces, as well as being alert and absorbed when the work of the
moment calls. I’ve wondered if the sign on the 6th house cusp
might prescribe one’s optimum daily rhythm—and the best
approach to 6th house crises. What I discovered was that most people
move through the day in the style of their Ascendant. I’ve
got Virgo rising, which means I adore planning, making schedules
and lists. "An hour for Tibetan prayers, another for reading,
then onto my work," I’ll tell myself. But then there are
phone calls, emails to answer, the electrician who doesn’t
come when he said he would. Aquarius is on my 6th house cusp. Aquarius
more accurately describes the unpredictable rhythms that I meet.
Despite my best intentions, my Virgo plans usually break down. If
the chart describes one’s daily rhythm, its formula goes more
like this: The Ascendant shows how you want the day to happen. The
6th describes how it actually does.

In most charts, the sign on the 1st house is inconjunct the sign
on the 6th. Inconjuncts are an aspect of disequilibrium. They keep
us off balance and require constant adjustments. This natural tension
between the Ascendant and the 6th house cusp is like a perpetual
motion machine, constantly returning us to the primary work of this
house: Reality knocks and we must transform. In the 6th we break
down experience and absorb its feedback. We improve our techniques
and skills, urged forward towards a perhaps unattainable perfection.
This marks the difference between a human’s work and a machine's.
It's impossible to write perfect articles, give perfect readings,
or be a perfect mom. But I keep trying. The awareness of how I fall
short is often painful. Yet in the disequilibrium between my intent
and its realization, I'm also urged forward again—toward new
techniques, approaches, understandings. All of this is unlike my
computer, who performs its tasks the same way each time, never caring
how they’re received.

The 6th is where we build mastery of our craft. We may want nothing
less than consistent success, but disequilibrium is where the magic
is. Creativity often springs from failure. We can learn from our
6th house crises. And isn’t that the key to mastery of our
life?

MOONPRINTS by Dana Gerhardt

Popular
with readers of "The Mountain Astrologer" for almost
two decades, this beautiful report takes an in-depth look at
your emotional foundations. You will gain new insights into your
birth moon - its phase, sign, aspects, and house. Discover your
life purpose, hidden talents and danger zones through the moon's
nodes. Use the moon to position yourself in time - through transits
to the moon, your progressed moon sign and house, dates for two
progressed lunation cycles, plus a year of new and full moons
around your chart. You'll want to read every page of this report,
designed to please both beginners and advanced students of astrology.